$300M Scandal Rocks National Security

The Republic of Ghana is set to pick up the tab for an amount of some three hundred million dollars after the government of Ghana, acting through the National Security Secretariat, signed a contract with two Chinese companies to execute the same project.

The three hundred million dollar tab that Ghana is happily picking up is on top of an amount of $60 million that the state has already paid to ZTE to get this same contract executed.

Investigations conducted by the Daily Searchlight revealed that during the reign of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), the National Security at Blue Gate signed a contract with internationally recognized communications company ZTE of China for an amount of USD 60 million to build a national communications network for National Security using CDMA technology.

The contract was in two phases, with the first phase to be funded with a concessional loan from the Eximbank of China.

The project was completed in early 2009, with ZTE to sign the second phase with National Security, but interestingly, this newspaper has learned that National Security rather went into agreement with another company from China by name Huawei, and instead of $30 million dollars being the payment for the second phase, the contract sum increased to a whopping sum of $150 million.

This newspaper has learned that as a sweetener to deal, the contract included communications coverage for Ghana's oil fields.

However, in a rather interesting twist, ZTE, which had the initial contract, also insisted that it should also be given a contract by the National Security set-up, and so they also signed another contract also valued at $150 million.

To avoid being caught and causing outrage, the new contract was given a different name, this newspaper has learned, even though both contractors are using CDMA technology, have the same scope and are serving the same purpose of providing a private communications backbone for National Security.

The implications of the preceding is that on top of an amount of $60 million dollars, Ghana is now going to pay the two Chinese companies an amount of $300 million for little or no work done.

Another interesting aspect of these development is that Huawei does not even have a frequency on which to operate, since the frequency assigned to National Security is already occupied by ZTE.